Dropbox app has just been upgraded to Version 2.1, and the most important improvement, from the point of view of a Marvin user, is that now you get the option to see your files sorted "by date modified". This could be useful if your newest additions don't happen to appear in that listing of 1000 Dropbox files right inside Marvin.

Dropbox app now has its internal PDF viewer (unimportant to me).

Kindle app has now been upgraded to Version 3.6, and it introduces 4 (!) highlight colours. Hellooooo, Amazooooon, wake up, wake up! It took them 3.6 versions to figure out that multi-colour highlights are an essential feature on an iDevice, because it ain't the good ol' black&white Kindle device? Well, "better late than never", I suppose. Now we only need to wait another 10-15 years for the Kindle app to catch up with some of the other elementary features still missing in it today. By the way, Marvin now offers 5 highlight colours -- the ideal number, in my experience.

The most relevant for Marvin in the new Kindle app version, to quote: "Brightness Control -- the brightness setting will now be saved across device sleeps."

The last item suggests, Kris, that Amazon managed to get iOS's "brightness bug" under control (see discussions earlier in this thread). This gives me hope that perhaps you could also make Marvin remember its own brightness setting "across device sleeps".

Not to hijack the thread too much, but the Dropbox sort by Date Modified is way overdue and extremely welcome. Finding files that you knew you worked on recently but can't remember the name is now possible!

There were ways around that -- for example, the excellent, free Documents by Readdle app makes it possible to sort your cloud (Dropbox, SugarSync, etc.) files using "Name" or "Date" or "Size". It's a superb, multi-cloud manager: all of your cloud services in one place.

Dropbox is going the way of all corporations. It almost seems like natural law: the bigger corporation you become, the poorer the software you produce. Just like, to get the most out of an iPad or iPhone, you need to use non-Apple, 3rd-party software, similarly, to get the most out of Dropbox, it will likely soon be seen as obvious to want to avoid Dropbox's native app, due to its being so feature-poor.

(For example, I have now switched off Dropbox's "Camera Upload" feature, which I found to be extremely buggy and unreliable. Instead, I bought the indie app CameraSync for a couple of bucks, which accomplishes the same task of uploading pictures and videos to Dropbox in a much more sophisticated way, giving the users lots of customizable options while doing so.)

This app is totally sucking up my time. I have spent more time in Calibre figuring out how I want my books to look. I have been adding the meta data, fixing covers, adding series information. None of this would have happened without this silly app.

I'm with you now, although I can only indirectly "blame" Marvin - when I moved my Calibre library to Dropbox, I lost my book covers (they show up in Marvin, but not in Calibre, which is bizarre). I figured out what happened when I saw that I couldn't import books into Calibre any more and researched that - turned out somehow I'd lost my metadata folder. So I found it and restored it, but the book covers still don't show up in Calibre. So I've started adding them back. Will I finish this task? Who knows - with almost 2000 books it's a chore, and the important thing is I can still see them in Marvin. But at the same time, I'm fixing some other metadata as well, cleaning up some things and "standardizing" stuff, so I've got something to keep me busy while I'm watching TV.

The more I've been thinking about textured backgrounds, the more convinced I become it would be simplest and smartest for Kris not to lose too much time over implementing this functionality -- although I consider it crucial for improving Marvin.

My suggestion to Kris: just make a a modest sample (say, 15 or 20 pictures) of textured backgrounds available in Marvin. This would simply demonstrate to the Marvin user how nice textured backgrounds can be. So, the small sample of 15-20 textured backgrounds should be well-chosen, representative.

Other than that, just give us a button, please, to upload our custom textured backgrounds for use in Marvin.

Why? Because it's infinitely easy, using Google Images search, to find just the right textured background for you. Why should Kris even attempt to oblige each of our different tastes and preferences in terms of textured backgrounds? Just let every Marvin user find their own preferred textured backgrounds using Google Images search, and that's it.

I tested yesterday how incredibly easy this is. For Day Mode, I prefer a "wood" theme as my textured background, so I entered "wood texture" (without the quotes) into Google Images search.

That's enough wood textures of all sorts of varieties to make your head spin for 3 days. Similarly, I prefer a black-and-red textured background for my Night Mode reading, so all I had to do was to enter "black red texture" into Google Images search...

Further, if Kris wanted to distribute any of these textures directly inside Marvin, he would first need to clear the copyright issue for every single such image, and I'm sure he has more important things to do. Whereas if users can just use their own, custom background textures/images, then their use, after locating any nice picture via (for example) Google Images search, conforms with "fair use for personal need only", on one's own personal iDevice only.

To conclude, below are 2 screenshots with "wood" and "black/red" textures I was able to collect using Google Images search engine yesterday within only a few minutes, for potential future use in Marvin. Looking forward to that day, because solid-colour backgrounds definitely are dreary (for me) to behold!

Books made of only image files, (mostly comics converted to ePub), do not use as much of the screen as they should.

See attached image.

Could you put on your list to expand the image display to use more of the screen?

Just started using the beta, do you want reports here or by email to the support address?

Art

Kris, first of all, congratulations for the new update.
I would also like to see images expand to the limits of the screen. I've converted some .cbr comics of mine through Calibre and, although all images are 1024x768 (iPad mini resolution), Marvin are showing them half their size at least. It would be very nice if you could fix it.

Earlier in this thread I pointed out that I was having a problem due to the limitation of 1000 books seen by Marvin in DropBox due to the limitation of the DropBox API. Dragging and dropping or using the web browser to get the books into Marvin seemed infeasible because a calibre library in DropBox has each author in a separate folder and each book in a subfolder.

I have no problem with this now Marvin supports OPDS catalogs.

I have nearly 5000 books in my Calibre library which I store in Dropbox. I have created a catalog with Calibre2OPDS which is also stored in Dropbox. I have put this catalog into the list of OPDS catalogs in my Marvin app and I now have access to all of my books (at least up to the last update of my catalog) wherever I have wifi access. I update my catalog every couple of weeks, but could do it more regularly. I always can resort to the Dropbox app for anything I know I downloaded since the last catalog update.

Calibre2OPDS is much more helpful in finding books than the Dropbox app itself as books can be found under Authors, Tags, Series, Recent additions, Rating, All books (I don't use this, but is a list of titles). Each of these is sub-divide alphabetically or by date as appropriate. Brilliant - not only can I find a specific book I am looking for, but I can also browse my library for a book to suit my fancy at that particular time!